Pope Benedict XVI has just completed a historic state visit to the United Kingdom. Despite the tireless efforts of the British Humanist Association, National Secular Society, Women Against Fundamentalism and similar groups – the visit was a huge success. Our Holy Father is an amazing shepherd in this troubled world.
The US mainstream press has covered the Pope’s triumph on their front pages from the New York Times to the LA Times and papers big and small everywhere in between. This is not just Catholic news but worldwide news. As fair and professional journalists, they presented history unfolding. Featured prominently was coverage of huge supportive crowds along with their government leaders. Here in the US, there was an apparent press blackout of the visit. Mostly, the usual anti-Catholic pieces appeared.
Deacon Greg Kandra noted this on his blog (The Deacon’s Bench). He wrote:
One of the biggest surprises of Pope Benedict’s historic trip to the United Kingdom may be how few people realize that it was, in fact, historic.
Sunday night, I was chatting by phone with my father-in-law in Maryland. I told him I’d been busy with the papal coverage all weekend.
“Didn’t seem like much happened,” he said.
“Really?,” I replied. “He was the first pope to visit the Church of England’s Westminster Abbey. He stood there with the Archbishop of Canterbury, side by side, as they both pronounced the final blessing and made the sign of the cross together.”
“He did that?” My father-in-law sounded genuinely surprised.
“He went to the hall where Thomas More was sentenced to death and delivered a speech about religion to the civil leaders of Great Britain.”
“He did?”
“And he took part in his first beatification: Cardinal John Henry Newman, an Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism.”
I could almost hear him scratching his bald head. “How come nobody said anything about that?”
Now, my father-in-law is a pretty smart guy, and what you might consider an observant Catholic. He attends mass every morning. He keeps up on current events. Now retired from the FDA, he regularly checks in with the Washington Post, USA TODAY, MSNBC and CNN. But he was baffled that this stuff I was telling him wasn’t on the nightly news.
“All we saw down here,” he explained, “was that he met with sex abuse victims.”
I started to wonder what sort of coverage the trip had received. After I hung up the phone, I searched through several newspaper websites. I clicked on the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe. Nothing, nothing, nothing. None of them mentioned on their home page the Pope’s just-completed trip.
When I got to work on Monday, I searched CNN Newsource, which provides newsfeeds to my show, “Currents,” as well as to countless other news programs around the country. I found a grand total of one item, running about a minute long, slugged “Anti-Pope Demonstrations.”
That was it.
Read the whole article entitled The pope, the greatest story never told.
Hilary White writes about the challenge and effect of the Pope’s visit. Too bad our press ignored it – they (purposefully) missed one great story! Be sure to read her truly excellent piece Britain Gobsmacked by Pope Benedict.
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